Rand Paul: A president should love liberty

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Sen. Rand Paul urged the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday to “imagine a time when the White House is once again occupied by a friend of liberty” — and signaled that he might fit that bill — in an unabashedly libertarian speech.

The Kentucky Republican spoke to a standing room-only audience, and attendees broke into cheers of “stand with Rand!” several times.

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In a nearly 20-minute address, Paul, who sounded hoarse, offered doses of history with references to founding fathers and founding documents; railed against indefinite detention and National Security Agency data collection; and slammed the Obama administration for, in his view, falling short on defending civil liberties. He reiterated several times that a “great president” would handle things differently.

“It isn’t good enough to pick the lesser of two evils,” he said of the two political parties. “We must elect men and women of principle and conviction and action who will lead us back to greatness. There is a great, great and tumultuous battle underway for the future, not for the Republican Party, but for the future of the entire country.”

Paul burst into the national spotlight almost exactly one year ago after mounting a filibuster tied to the Obama administration’s policy on using drones against American citizens. He nodded to that event, and referred to several other libertarian accomplishments, drawing applause.

“Let’s do it together, let’s take a stand,” he said. “When the president refused to rule out drone [use] against American citizens, I took a stand and filibustered.”

The first-term senator also mentioned the lawsuit he has filed against the Obama administration over NSA data collection, saying: “Some things are worth fighting for. When I discovered the NSA spying is collecting every American’s record, I took a stand. I sued the president.

“It is decidedly not a time for the faint of heart,” he concluded. “It’s a time for boldness, [for] action. Stand with me, let us stand together for liberty.”

Paul insisted as recently as Friday morning that his “position on foreign policy and the arena of national defense is that it’s the most important thing that the federal government does.” But in his CPAC speech, he also made clear that he does not believe in compromising civil liberties for greater security.

The “sons of liberty,” he contended, would argue: “We will not trade our liberty for security. Not now, not ever.”

The firebrand libertarian speech was a sharp departure from the address he has frequently offered on the stump in recent months; typically Paul adopts a wry, understated tone as he jabs at government spending and also pushes for a broader GOP tent.

But at CPAC, he was clearly comfortable employing lofty rhetoric and references to historical figures and philosophers. He also invoked the band Pink Floyd, quoting the song “Wish You Were Here” in describing how some civil libertarian-minded people may be disappointed in the president.

“How will history remember Barack Obama?” he asked. “To those who had hoped President Obama would somehow be a champion of civil liberties, [Pink Floyd’s] Roger Waters might ask: ‘Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Did they get you to exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage’?”

Paul suggested to POLITICO last month that opposing indefinite detention could be a smart political move. He touched on the issue again in Friday’s speech, speaking emotionally about all of the minority groups that should rally against the policy.

“Justice cannot occur without a trial,” he said. “That fact should be abundantly clear to any group that has ever been persecuted. You can be a minority by the color of your skin or the shade of your ideology. Anyone who has ever paddled upstream, anyone who has ever been [in the] minority of thought or religion, anyone who has ever taught their children at home or sought to pray to God without permission should be alarmed that any government might presume to imprison without trial.”